Character Map in Windows 7

My wife is Finnish, and uses the character map to find letters within their alphabet. Eg: ä is achieved by pressing Alt 132. During this question it only worked using the keypad, not the numbers across the top of keyboard. However, my wife's laptop runs win7 and has no keypad. Is there an easy way to add these characters please.

Hi, thanks for your replies, your suggestions work within 'ms word', even the basic one that comes pre-installed with win7, but the problems start with emailing to her friends and family in Finland. Windows Live includes Hotmail which would have been ideal, i guess, but gave up with it as it kept refusing to accept the password, so she's signed up with G-Mail, but as yet haven't found a way of copying and pasting the character maps letters into it from 'word'.

How about adding a Finnish keyboard so that you can practice in notepad where the appropriate keys are? If you have no "EN" showing in the notification area then you have only one keyboard available.

Go to control panel, and under, view by 'large icons', select 'Region and Language'- select the 'keyboard and language' tab, then the 'change keyboard' tab, in the window that opens select the 'add' tab under General and select 'Finnish' to expand and select 'keyboard'. Select OK. Select apply. In the window that shows both keyboards (English and Finnish) select the Language Bar tab and dot the radio button for 'Docked in the taskbar'.

Now you have 'EN' showing to the left of the notification area so left click and select the keyboard you wish to use.